Blazed(16)

"It's you," I purred back, "you've done something wicked to me."

"Well I'm glad. You're smouldering. Glowing."

"Blazing?" He smirked down at me, but the intent of his smile shifted quickly. His gaze was fiercer and hotter than I'd ever seen it— positively incendiary. I whispered an apology and tried to squirm out of his hold, regretting making him feel so... what? What did he feel?

"Why are you apologising?" He wrapped around me tighter, making it clear that he didn't want me to escape. How deep did that desire run?

"The way you're looking at me. I just felt like I needed to apologise."

He sucked in a breath and leaned his forehead down against mine. "Don't. You don't know what it is you're looking at." With yet another cryptic remark and the gentle kisses he laid across my face, I fell into a deep, restful sleep.

When I woke up, he was gone, leaving nothing but the bags of clothes from Oxford Street and the anonymous suit's money clip as his calling card.





"YOU’RE WEARING YOUR hair down." Daniel pulled me from my thoughts of the vanished enigma that was Blaze with his observation and a glass of wine as he and Jonathan took their usual seats opposite me in Esme's. "You haven't worn it down in years. It gets in the way."

"Blaze likes it down." I rolled my eyes at myself for doing something so juvenile. So what if he liked me to wear my hair loose? He wasn't there. He probably wouldn't ever be there again. Five minutes away from me and he probably started to think rationally about all that had been thrown at him that afternoon.

"And new clothes?" Jonathan leaned across the table to examine the stitching on the uncharacteristically form fitting blazer wrapped around me. Once I'd taken a bitter sweet look at the haul from the shopping trip, I'd realised that my new wardrobe was actually rather impressive and really gave me no excuses to keep wearing the clothes I hadn't noticed were quite so big on me. The man had a great fashion sense— shame the same couldn't be said for his taste in women, though that lapse in judgement was now technically rectified if he'd seen sense. "You look great. Very London. Very much the multi-billionaire's prodigally alcoholic daughter."

"Wow, thanks." I was suddenly far less keen on the blazer, vest and jeans combo if it made me look like a Tudor. There had been no shoe shopping, so the outfit was scruffed up with a pair of well-loved deck shoes.

"Don't sweat it, you're still hotter than your sister." Obviously. "So have you tapped that yet?" Jonathan grinned at me cheekily and settled back down next to Daniel, who regarded me suspiciously. I was almost as transparent to him as I was to Blaze. "I knew you had that look about you. It's going to be two men in one day again, Emmy? I am in awe of you."

"Oh, I..." My hair veiled my face as it filled with blood. "I think I've been used as a penile insertion point quite enough for one day." I looked up just in time to see Esme sit down next to Daniel and their exchanged glances.

"Who's penile insertion point? Blaze?" She bit her lip to stifle a laugh. "Hallelujah, praise the lord. She finally nailed him. But this could get awkward because he just walked in."

"What?"

Chris snorted grumpily next to me and scanned the room for a glimpse of Blaze. There he was, stood at the bar draped in a loose white cotton shirt and pinstripe trousers. "You should really drop your standards, Emmeline. Guys like that won't care about your quest to chase impossibly high standards and ideals because they think they have it all. He'll be expecting exceptional and preferential treatment because he's a pretty-boy with a loaded wallet and you'll end up in another one of your funks."

"I'm already in one of my funks, Chris. She's been following me around all day." My pulse started to race when Blaze turned at the bar with a tray of six drinks and began to weave between the tables towards us. "And if you recall, I do drop my standards. Frequently. Don't tell me our nights together haven't been memorable because I'll call you a liar."

I stood when Blaze reached our table, and met his unusually cool gaze with one of my own, rife with confusion. Why had he come back? He looked fantastic, the shirt fitting the contours of the body I had spent an afternoon writhing against. God, I wanted him, and not just physically. I'd been so distracted by his disappearance that I'd been oblivious to the dull ache that had manifested in the depths of my chest in his absence— the acute need he'd left behind. It was a craving unlike any I'd ever known, and my point of relief stood only a foot away, looking stunning and smelling like expensive cologne and hot sex. He hadn't showered.

"You look surprised to see me," he murmured so only I could hear.

"You left."

"I couldn't stay— couldn't fall asleep next to you and wake up with you in my arms. That would have been bad for both of us. But I couldn't go either." His voice cracked with sincerity, and I knew that he was one man who would be nothing but honest with me. I treasured that aspect of him. "No matter how many times I leave, I'll always be back. Remember that. So, is there room for one more in your coven?"

Nervously, I turned back to my four friends for their verdict. Esme and Jonathan were almost dancing in their places while Chris and Daniel shared aggrieved expressions, anticipating the inevitable disaster that would befall me. Daniel saw it, the bigger picture in the way our bodies leaned together and the fearful glint in our eyes. Chris saw nothing but an impending repeat performance of the keening and sobbing Hunter left behind when he visited, provided by a new source. They would always be standing on the sidelines waiting to be tagged into the ring.

And as Blaze took the seat next to me, I knew that when that firestorm of a disaster hit, we'd be thrown into a full blown mutiny. That table was too crowded now. 'Us' and them packed into a booth that wasn't nearly big enough for all our complications.





Six





THE WARM, GENTLE buzz of voices and aura of serenity in Esme's that night was deceptive. Heartbroken lovers laughed with friends like they weren't in pain. Addicts tended to their vices like they wouldn't shake and sweat for them tomorrow. Enemies drank together as though the bad blood could be sweetened with anecdotes and recalled memories from times past. The sick and depressed faked smiles and lied about just how ill they were.

And, as normal, all of their flaws centred into me, the culmination of all that misery sat next to a man who settled into my surroundings like he'd donned camouflage and infiltrated us from the inside out. I suppose he had.

Blaze and Esme gossiped about a cartoon they'd both worked on as voice actors, Daniel and Jonathan quietly discussed dinner arrangements, while Chris and I sat, turgidly silent, watching them all but barely aware of what was happening. His tense quiet boiled down to little more than feeling like he had been, once again, overlooked as anything more than a source of dry wit and like minded humour. This was his usual pattern— pinning hopes on the unlikely and brooding when a miracle didn't happen. He didn't understand that even though he wasn't my first choice of bedfellow, he was still a very huge and vital part of my life. I might have lowered my defences one or twice, but I never gave off any impression that I wanted him for anything more than studding services. Manipulative, maybe, but he knew where he stood. That didn't stop him hoping.

"I don't think the big guy likes me." Blaze's hand slid discreetly over to my thigh and squeezed as soon as Chris left to collect his round from the bar. The action was so instantaneous that it seemed like he'd been holding off on purpose until it was 'safe' to touch me. Negative vibes had been flying around so viciously that it should have been obvious that Blaze might have felt like I'd been marked as forbidden territory.

Jonathan laughed quietly and shook his head into an impressively large glass of brandy. "Don't take it personally. He shows that kind of contempt for anyone who thwarts his nightly attempts to pillage the Deep White South. Tonight it's you, tomorrow it'll be someone else, then someone else and someone else until Emmy has a dry night and he begs for his turn against Esme with the flip of a coin." Hearing that out loud by someone else was uncomfortable— my somewhat promiscuous behaviour— worse knowing that Blaze heard it too. If he was any other man, he'd be disposable. As it was, I wanted to keep him around but I wasn't in the mindset to change any habits for him. He was less in my life on a guest pass and more of a VIP with a membership card like only four other people, but that didn't mean that the menu, entertainment and venue would change for him. There would be no gaps and breaks in my normal life when he wasn't around, and if he expected there to be, we were already at a painful impasse.

"And what if my day trip becomes an extended holiday?"

"Emmy would never... You have seen the scars right? Doesn't it bother you?"